





Agnes Holzmann, deported from Jena to Theresienstadt on September 19, 1942, at the age of 79. Died there from hunger after a few days; Erna and Leon Heilbrun fled Nordhausen to France but were there again subject to NS persecution and took their lives in an internment camp in 1942 to avoid deportation to Auschwitz; betrayed by neighbours, Rosemarie Cohn was sent to Auschwitz and deported from there to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus at the age of 17. These examples offer a brief impression of the persecution of Jews in Thuringia under National Socialism. Before 1933, over 6,000 people of the Jewish faith lived in this region, of which over a third perished by 1945 – at least 2,261 Menschen.
This is the result of recent research carried out while compiling a digital book of remembrance, which has been available online at www.juedisches-leben-thueringen.de since September 1, 2022. It contains the name, biographical dates, address, deportation site, and place of death of each individual victim. This new project commemorating those who were murdered forms an important basis for further explorations of Jewish history at specific place and in Thuringia as a whole. The book can be updated at any time.
Working with this book of remembrance, a special participatory event took place on September 19, 2022, in Weimar, which commemorated all of the people in Thuringia who died from anti-Semitic persecution and executions. On Stéphane-Hessel-Platz in front of the massive building of the former National Socialist Gauforum, their names were written on the pavement in white chalk. Previously the names of those deported and murdered were written on the ground at the main rail station in Erfurt, on Marktplatz in Meiningen, and on Johannisplatz in Gera.
In Weimar, all the names were photographed individually with a 16mm camera, and a film is being produced to document all 2,261 names. The entire writing event was streamed online. Various initiatives and institutions were present, providing additional activities and information; they included ACHAVA Festspiele Thüringen, Bürgerbündnis gegen Rechtsextremismus Weimar, Initiative Gedenkweg Buchenwaldbahn, and Klassik Stiftung Weimar.
The online book of remembrance and "Schreiben gegen das Vergessen" were made possible as part of a cooperative project of Erinnerungsortes Topf & Söhne, the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation, Thüringer Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, Landeszentrale für politische Bildung, and the artist Margarete Rabow. It was sponsored by the Thuringian Ministry for Education, Youth, and Sports as part of the "Denk Bunt," the Thuringian State Programme for Democracy, Tolerance, and Open-mindedness.